Satanism

Say what you will about LaVey... I just want to see how people feel about these... always liked them:

The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
by Anton Szandor LaVey

Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.

Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.

When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.

If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.

Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.

Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

Do not harm little children.

Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.

When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Don’t let the delusion of reality confuse you regarding the reality of the illusion.

Well... This is a case of selective quoting. If you wanna know how I feel about this quote... those "commandments" are simply common sense.

I am often VERY GUILTY of not following the commandment of "Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them."... because of my talkative nature (I don't exactly tell my troubles, but simply random things... those who know me and I trust are aware of it).

And then I'm also GUILTY (?) of not following the commandment of "When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him."... I'm not aggressive and I often find another solution.

Other than that... If we are meant to give an opinion of this isolated quote, then I'd say that it's mostly common sense (i.e, "Do not harm little children."... anyone who does it is an asshole... same thing for each of the other commandments).

BUT if we have to give an opinion on LaVey... his "Satanic Bible" can only be read as comedy. One of the worst books I've read in my life, only surpassed in its absurdity by the self-biography that Eva Peron wrote (which is worthy to read as comedy).

The main ideas of LaVey are:
-There is no God and no Satan... the only reality is the material reality.
-Material success is the ONLY sign that shows who is worthy and who is not.
-The rituals devoted to Satan are symbolic, because there's not a real Satan and only what you can see with your eyes is real.
-And for some unknown reason, magic works... but this can't be related to the idea that there is something "metaphysical".
-And his social darwinism is not something I adore at all.

A dear friend, with whom I have not talked in almost 10 years (Ooops! Gotta fix that! He's so nice and clever <-- That's me being "talkative") wrote a marvelous article on LaVey many many years ago. Actually, LaVey was alive when he wrote it.

In most cases, when we read an article, we have some agreements and some disagreements with it... but with this article, I even agree with the dots and the commas and every single word... and that's what I also think of LaVey.

But if we have to comment only these "commandments"... well, they are simply common sense, but it's a "selective quoting", Dev...

zoas23 could we not call the bible comedy with some parts common sense?

Walking on water, a time when the average age was 800 years...etc.

When we hear the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, most I would think see the serpent as bad and god as good.

Just as we are talking about the different ways to interpret the Alchemical texts there are different ways to interpret the bible.

Like the young girl and the scratched paint you mentioned in the one matter thread, perhaps we have not seen the wood for
the trees in this case, and maybe the serpent was good and god was bad.

You mentioned the above quote as being mostly common sense, if this is the case then there are many people who do not
possess this quality.

Ghislain

The good serpent and the bad God is an idea that began even with the earliest forms of Jewish-Christian Gnosticism (Sethianism)...
And the interpretation of the Bible as a purely allegorical text is also very old (i.e, Philo of Alexandria and his idea that nothing in the Torah is literal... and that it's not a "history book").

I don't see much chances of making an allegorical interpretation of the Satanic Bible... Since LaVey is hardly a good writer.

If the issue is to find allegories in modern forms of Satanism, I would look into the bizarre and somehow interesting The Process Church of The Final Judgment.

Originally Posted by Andro

This statement contradicts itself!

Lol... I get what you mean.
But LaVey himself was a living contradiction.... his weird twists to reconcile his materialistic views with "magic" are... well... it's hard to find his type of idiocy elsewhere.

I just like to speak about Satanism in positive terms just to see the confusion on peoples faces. I guess in a sense that is Satanic behavior in its essence. LOL.

LOL... If I wanted to do such thing, I would probably pick something a bit more twisted, like The Process Church of The Final Judgment... or the most "Satanic" side of Maria de Naglowska... but LaVey, that man was just a clown (the only interesting thing he did in his life was being an actor in one of the films of Kenneth Anger).

Reducing Satanism to Lavey is like reducing Psychology to Freud. The comparison is bad, I know. But you see the point. I know you don't do that Dev of course, just saying.

Concerning the Bible - great difference between the old and new Testament ("an eye for an eye" in the old one, and "love each other" in the new...), see Anton Park's translation of the Sumerian Tablets and the story of Adam and Eve will take another turn. Jews got inspired by the Sumerian "history" and culture, and remade it in a more misogynistic way, and completely distorted also. So basically, Genesis, flood, etc, is completely made up from old akkadian and sumero babylonian culture. Dig there for more clarity. Most of the available translation were funded by christians millionaires, so, of course, don't expect to read the whole truth, since it is an inconvenient one... Only Anton Parks made a great, independant one (I've read it, it is good and very clear).

Most part of "Satanic behaviors and actions" are more linked with Catholic church than "satanist people", see Spanich Inquisition ... Killing South American people, crusades ... But, yes, killing a new born baby is very common in serious groups, and eating its flesh after the offering also.

Anton Parks

"Parks himself does not believe his books to be works of fiction. Rather, they are a transcription of experiences he had - through an imposed virtual reality projection, or a para-psychological mind meld, or some other process for which we cannot even propose a name - that intruded upon and overwhelmed his daily life for many years."

[...]

"Parks' experiences began at the age of 14, in 1981, with a series of "flashes" that would occur at any hour of the day, and completely beyond his control. These eventually evolved into "visions" that took place from once to three times each day. The visions seemed somehow to be related to or triggered by the ambient light at the time of their occurrence. The light in the visions had the same "spectrum" as the surrounding light. They came as "jets of light" from above, penetrating the top of his head, at the level of the "seventh principal chakra." They would instantly disconnect him from his surroundings and move him into complete scenes, including the aspect of sound. He would find himself "inside" a certain being, and usually would find the same set of "personages" around him.

These living experiences would take from two to up to ten minutes. Yet if there were people around Parks at the time the visions occurred, they did not seem to notice that anything special had happened, which leads Parks to believe that he would have been gone for only a few seconds at most, in their time. Parks struggled to comprehend the source of these visions, and their meaning. It was not until the end of the 90s and much research that he came to understand that they were related to the Sumerian civilization and to a language from which the Sumerian language emerged."

Also, from the excerpts/notes I've read so far that are available in English, he also seems to be into female-worshiping concepts, such as Robert Morning Sky (along with lots of new agers). I wonder what Freud would say about this

Anyway, these are his interpretations (same goes for LaVey), and they are subject to subjectivity just as (almost) everything else. They're all individually valid, but they're not 'the truth'.